by Erin | May 8, 2013

Spring Pinterest Challenge

Eeeee! I’m excited to join Young House Love, Bower Power, Sparkle Meets Pop, & Red Bird Blue for my first ever Pinterest challenge! Let’s be honest, the only reason this happened is because Brandon is a doer. A mover and a shaker. He gets things done. I am not those things. Which is why we’re a good match… opposites attract, right? I bought the supplies for this project, oh coughfouryearsagocough. Yeahhhhh, I am a project starter…. noooot really a project finisher. Anyways… I’m rambling. Onto the Pinterest Challenge!

I started seeing these pop up a while ago on the interwebs and was like WE HAVE TO DO THIS!!!!

Aren’t they PRETTY!?!?! I’m not yelling at you, I am just sooooo excited!!!

We received a Pottery Barn credit, and it expires soon so we bought a few of their hanging mason jars.

When we got them in the mail, Brandon thought they were so cool and wanted to make some more! I was game. But I didn’t want them to look cheap. Well, he took care of that. And boy do they look bang-o-rang!

Here is the step by step tutorial on how to make ‘em!

The list of the supplies you will need to make the hanging mason jars:

-Mason Jars

-Galvanized wire

-drill

-needle nose pliers

-screw hook to act as a drill bit (you can use any type of hook that will fit into your drill)

-scrap wood

-screw

-candles or flowers or whatever you want to put in your finished mason jar! {We have votive sized citronella candles}

1. Take galvanized wire and straighten in out (it will be really loopy because it has been rolled up.) We worked in approximately 10′ increments.

2. Create one long loop with your 10′ piece of wire. Twist the two ends together. Honestly, this doesn’t have to be pretty because you’re going to cut off the twist later. You just don’t want the loop to unravel mid-twisting.

3. Insert the hook in the drill. We had some extra screw hooks from another project so we just used that but anything with a hook will work.

4. Screw a screw {haha} into a piece of wood. For his first one, he used a loose nail on our deck but if you don’t have a wonky deck with loose nails then would recommend a scrap piece of wood.

5. Hook the middle of the wire loop around the screw.

6. Place twisted end of loop on the ‘hook bit’ and drill away! You’ll want to ‘drill’ until the wires get pretty tight. You’ll probably have to cut the wires off of the hook and screw because it will be so tight.

Here’s a little video that shows how Brandon twisted the wire.

7. You’ll end up with a really long twisted wire. You’ll be cutting two different lengths from that wire- 12″ pieces will go around the lid of the mason jar and 14″ pieces will be the handle. Note: These dimensions will only work on the “Regular Mouth” mason jars. You’ll likely need to tweak dimensions for different styled jars.

- To make the piece for the mouth of the jar -

8. Take the 12″ piece and make a small loop at one end (use needle nose pliers) and a 90 degree bend at the other end. Bend the wire around the jar to curve it.

9. Place the curved wire around jar & locate the location for loop #2, which should be directly opposite loop #1. Make loop #2. {Yes, those are inch worms inside the jar. We are having an inch worm epidemic here in Virginia. It. is. DISGUSTING. Brandon found these on him when he came inside!?!?! UGHHH}

- To make the handle -

10. Take the 14″ piece and bend around the jar to get a nice, smooth curve. Create a tear drop loop on each end.

11. Attach handle and you’re done!

And now for a comparison

Now, ideally I would have loved to have used a wide mouth mason jar but we were just using what we had on hand.

You can hang them from a tree branch with twine or use some sort of hook screwed into the tree (I’m sure there are many other ways to hang them, too). I had bought these black hooks from Southern States 4 years ago, so I’m not sure if they still carry them. But I’m sure you can find something similar at any lawn and garden store.

Here is a cost comparison of our mason jars vs. Pottery Barn’s.

Mason Jars: $14.49 for 12 jars {$1.21/jar, from Amazon}

Galvanized Wire: $6.28 for 100 ft {$0.27/jar, you use about 4.5 ft of wire per jar}

That comes out to $1.48/jar {But we had everything on hand so I like to think this project was FREE even though we bought the supplies a while ago. ;) }.

Pottery Barn normally sells them for $9.50 + shipping, but they’re on sale right now for $7.50 {not including shipping}.

So what do you think? Pretty easy and super inexpensive! Let me know if you end up making some so I can see how yours turn out!

Hop on over to Sherry, Katie, Emily and Renee‘s blogs to see what they cooked up!

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Filed under Crafts

Tagged as bower power, hanging mason jar, pinterest challenge, pottery barn, Red Bird Blue, Sparkle Meets Pop, young house love

by Erin | May 6, 2013

Square Foot Garden

Brandon has been wanting to build some raised bed gardens for a few years now and every time we were ready to actually implement his plans, it would be too late in the season. But not this year!

We put the garden in the back yard which doesn’t get as much sun as the front yard, but I didn’t really want a huge garden in the front yard. He used Ana White’s $10 raised garden bed plans, but since our garden was 10x bigger, it cost more than $10… obviously. Unfortunately, we have a very affluent community of moles, so we had to dig out one foot below the original ground level and install an underground cage that prevents moles from finding the roots of the plants (Thanks Shawn!).

Since neither of us have any significant gardening experience, we used a square foot garden planner website called Smart Gardener to figure out what to plant, where, and what veggies go well next to each other. It made planning sooooo easy.

So, what did we plant in the garden?

Well if you reaaaalllyyyy wanna know..

0 – Arugula

1 – Basil

2 – Pole Beans

3 – Edamame

4 – Chives

5 – Cilantro

6 – Cucumber

7 – Lettuce (deer tongue)

8 – Marigold

9 – Oregano

10 – Parsley

11 – California Wonder Pepper

12 – Chocolate Beauty Pepper

13 – Golden Summer Pepper

14 – Jalapeno

15 – Sweet Banana Peppers

16 – Rosemary

17 – Zucchini Squash

18 – Summer Squash

19 – Butternut Squash

20 – Thyme

21 – Tomatillo

22 – Roma Tomato

23 – Rutgers Tomato

24 – Sun Sugar Tomato

25 – Amish Moon and Star Watermelon

We don’t have a complete before picture but this is after Brandon and my brother, Shawn dug out the area where the garden is.

Sorry no process pictures of Brandon building the bed but here is his victory picture.

And this is his “I dominated that” picture. :)

Last Friday morning, Brandon, Caden and I went to one of our local nurseries, Great Big Greenhouse to look for some starter veggies, seeds, flowers for our front yard and compost for the raised bed. Caden was SO EXCITED (to wear his hat)!!!

But all of that excitement…. it’ll wear ya down.

They delivered all of our goods later that afternoon and B got to work filling the raised bed!

Fill ‘er up!

There it is – 3 yards of organic compost!

Caden and I surveyed all of the plants that were about to be planted while daddio did the leg work.

Le finished product complete with pinwheels! They’re supposed to keep away the squirrels and Tobys. Ha. I guess if they don’t they’re still pretty and Caden likes them.

Caden was really excited to plant the watermelon seeds! We’re growing them in these pots until they’re bigger, then we’ll transplant them to the garden.

And a look at our front flower bed! Half of the flowers are ones that we planted last year and have established. I’m horrible and picking out things that look good together. So it might look like a hodge podge but maybe it will end up looking like a wild garden! We’re going to mulch soon so it’ll look even more awesome than THIS!

This project completes #63 on my 101 list!

Four Months

Wow, I feel like Caden has changed drastically this month. He has started grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. He will take something and inspect it inquisitively for a while. He’s a chewing and drooling machine.

We’ve also taken a step backwards in the sleeping department. The other night he woke up 10+ times in one night. I stopped counting after 10. It was too frustrating and I almost lost it… I just had to turn myself on autopilot and get through the night. I feel like we need to revisit the un-swaddling process. We tried it a few weeks ago and it did NOT work. I went ahead and bought a swaddle strap {aka the baby straight jacket}. It works like a charm. I had a question so I emailed the company and Anna {the owner} emailed me back right away and she was so sweet. I would definitely recommend it!

Another cute thing he’s started doing that I love happens sometimes when I’m getting ready to feed him. I sit him up in the nursing chair in his room while I’m putting the Brestfriend on. He starts to kick his legs and flap his arms because he’s so excited to eat. If he’s not doing this, he’s screaming uncontrollably because a) he’s hungry or b) he’s mad that I set him down in the chair instead of feeding him five minutes ago but probably c) both. Haha. Usually its 50/50. You never know what you’re gonna get.

His four month stats are:

Weight: 16lbs {70th percentile}

Height: 26″ {90th percentile}

Head: 42cm {60th percentile}

His three month stats were:

Weight: 14lbs 4oz

His two month stats were:

Weight: 12lbs 12oz {75th percentile}

Height: 24″ {90th percentile}

Head: 39cm {50th percentile}

His one month stats were:

Weight: 10lbs 9oz {75th percentile}

Height: 22.5″ {90th percentile}

Head: 37cm {50th percentile}

His newborn stats were:

Weight: 8lbs 6oz

Height: 22.5″

Head: 34cm

Caden’s Firsts

3.2913 – Sick visit {He had a slight fever and just wasn’t acting himself. The DR said his fever wasn’t high enough for any tests so we just monitored it. It went away within a few hours. You would NOT know he was sick by this picture!}

3.31.13 – Easter – Daddy and Caden are twins!

4.05.13 – Visit to Granny at her new place

4.08.13 - Google hangout with his cousins

4.10.13 – Caden started reaching and grabbing things. The first time he did it he reached for my mouth and grabbed my lips and then laughed. I was so shocked I squealed and kind of scared him. But he kept doing it and laughing! It’s so funny because he doesn’t have total control of his arms and hands yet. He flaps and waves his arms around in big waving movements until he gets what he wants. It’s so cute! The next day he kept grabbing my ring on my finger!

4.11.13 – the drool spigot turned on and won’t turn off!!! AHHHH. He was sitting on my lap and all of a sudden my legs were very wet and I was like what the!? and I looked and drool was e v e r y w h e r e!!! Oh my goodness… is teething about to start??? He’s chewing on anything he can put in his mouth.